


BTVS - Critiquing the Gothic Romance Trope

by shadowkat67



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s02e19 I Only Have Eyes For You, Episode: s03e04 Beauty and the Beasts, F/M, Gothic, Meta, Romance, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S1-S3 at the moment, and have just completed the first five episodes of Season 3. What I've become struck by this go around, which I didn't really notice before, no idea why - is the deft critique of romantic love and in particular the gothic romance trope, with all of its horrific consequences. Joss Whedon and his writing team are deft satirists of the horror and in particular gothic horror/gothic romance tradition. Not surprising, considering the name of the series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer - that alone, just screams satire.
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 10
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	BTVS - Critiquing the Gothic Romance Trope

A while back, can't remember when exactly, I watched an old interview with Audrey Hepburn during the interview she said a lot of things, but the statement that stuck with me was this:

"When you are young you want wild passionate love, where you can't stop thinking about the other person, you become lost in them, and you fight and have wild love at night...but it gets tiring. You can't sustain it. After a while...you find you are just tired. Later, when I got much older...I realized that I didn't want that. I wanted someone I could just sip tea with, talk to, sleep with, go on walks, who was a companion, and we didn't necessarily have sex all the time, but we loved and it was deeper and lasted longer." I wish I could remember her exact words.

Been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, S1-S3 at the moment, and have just completed the first five episodes of Season 3. What I've become struck by this go around, which I didn't really notice before, no idea why - is the deft critique of romantic love and in particular the gothic romance trope, with all of its horrific consequences. Joss Whedon and his writing team are deft satirists of the horror and in particular gothic horror/gothic romance tradition. Not surprising, considering the name of the series is Buffy the Vampire Slayer - that alone, just screams satire.

There's a great line in the fourth episode of S3, the episode in which Angel returns from hell, entitled Beauty and the Beasts:

"It's okay to get lost in love. There's nothing wrong with that. But sooner or later you have to get un lost, see what is going on around you and take part in it. Because if you stay lost...then love becomes your master, and you - its dog."

The speaker is Doctor Plat. A psychiatrist that Buffy is forced to see after she is reinstated in school. The line occurs after Buffy has confided in him her feelings regarding Angel. She's told him that she had loved this guy, he had been her first, and then...he turned mean, but she still loved him anyway.

Doctor Plat is killed, rather brutally, by the boyfriend of another patient, a couple who serve as metaphorical stand-in's for the Buffy/Angel romance of the last season and this one. They even look a bit like Buffy and Angel, Debbie is blond, and her boyfriend is dark headed and when he turns into Mr. Hyde - has the ridged forehead, slanted demon eyes, and speaks a bit like Angelus. It's subletly done. As we had with Angel - Angel/Angelus - who appear as separate as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, so does this guy - he's the cute angelic hunk/ and abusive monster. When he changes, the monster remembers but he does not. Angel similarily claims to have no knowledge of Angelus or Angelus's deeds when he returns to Buffy at the end of Becoming Part II - just as Debbie's boyfriend acts as if he has knowledge of Mr. Hyde. But when she attempts to get rid of the formula that turned him into the monster - he tells her, he no longer needs it - she is enough, all by herself, to do it to him. Just as Angelus states that all Angel requires is Buffy to turn him into mean old Angelus.

In case we don't get the point, there are camera shots that emphasize it - when Debbie's boyfriend changes back into his Dr. Jekyll persona and sees that he hurt her, he falls to his knees in front of her and hugs her waist crying. And she pats him, saying that's not you. This isn't you. At the end of the episode, Angel is in the same pose, his head buried in Buffy's stomach, as Buffy looks past him...the camera pulls back to show us what she sees - in the foreground, while she and Angel fade into the background - it's Debbie lying on her back, dead on the ground, killed by her boyfriend who had turned once again into Mr. Hyde. The image serves as a warning and potentially foreshadowing.

Then there's the first episode of S3, Anne, written and directed by Joss Whedon. It's an episode that I was admittedly less than fond of when it first aired. Now, I see the satire that I didn't see then. It feels obvious to me now. So much so, that I wonder how I could have missed it. In this episode, Buffy is attempting to get lost, to lose herself in her memories of Angel, in her love of Angel, and her grief and overwhelming guilt at his loss.

Buffy had killed Angel and sent him to hell at the end of Season 2, at her friends urging, and in order to save the world. But, for Buffy, nothing but Angel matters, and part of her wishes she'd gone with him. She runs across a young couple, Lily and Ricky, who have tattoos - on Lily's arm is half a heart with Ricky, and the other half of the heart is on Ricky's arm with Lily. They are both fairly pale, undernourished, and wrapped around each other - as if they are all that matters. They see nothing else. Then Ricky disappears, and Lily is lost. Wandering about like a ghost. Buffy tells her that she needs to deal, not close her eyes to everything but Ricky or what she's lost. But Lily doesn't listen and gives into the despaire, what is life without Ricky? So she literally follows Ricky to hell. Except he's long gone, having gone there before her, and left an old man. 80 years of age. Buffy save Lily, and Lily taking inspiration from Buffy - takes her pseudonyme Ann, and her job at Denny's waitressing.

Ricky and Lily are much like Debbie and Dr. Jekyll (Pete?) - stand-in's for Buffy and Angel. Victims of love.

In Season 2, the episode I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - shows this as well, except in this episode Angelus and Buffy get stand-in for the doomed lovers. The lovers in this episode, are an older teacher and her love-sick student, who as the title states only has eyes for her. She is his life. He can think of nothing else. When she rejects him, because she's much older and their love can't work - he kills her, then himself - because life without her is something he can't handle. Buffy is the person he picks to possess in order to find his own peace - because as she states, he knows she can identify. And Angelus is picked for similar reasons - he is obsessed with Buffy, much as he had been when he had a soul. [ETA for clarity: Like the teacher, he finds himself obsessed with Buffy, he can't break it off, he can't leave her. Even though he knows it is wrong, even though he knows he is hurting her. Even when he has the chance - to leave town on her birthday, he gives her a gift keeping her with him. The implication here - in case you missed it - is the teacher who has the experience, the knowledge, who knows what will happen, keeps the relationship going until it almost too late to break it off. And when the worst does happen, she continues it by possessing people, enabling her lover to kill them each night again and again. The misdirect is that the student is the villian her, that is what Buffy thinks, because Buffy blames herself for Angel going bad. As may well the viewer. But if you pay close attention to the metaphors before and after that episode, from Inca Mummy Girl to Ted, you'll see that it is not necessarily Buffy's fault, any more than it is Xander's for loving the mummy girl or Joyce's for loving Ted. It's her fault for letting herself get lost in him. Letting the love take over, so she's sees nothing else. But Angel is the one that pursued Buffy, and Angel is the one who went after her. Just as the mummy girl, Ted, Malcolm the Robot, and the Praying Mantis (monsters from the first season) go after their targets.]

Angel much like the teacher in I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, loves her, but it is love that is not rational, and leads him about by the nose. As Spike states in an earlier episode, Innocence, "it sickened me, watching you play the slayer's lap-dog" - which in effect is what Angel had become. As Angelus, he wants to hurt her. To make her feel as he did. Yet, he still, as Willow states in Passion, Buffy is all he thinks about. And as a result the world falls down. In I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU - the two doomed lovers kill innocent people as they replay their self-involved love story over and over again, killing all and hurting all that get in the way of it. They are not kind ghosts. Angel and Buffy similarily inflict harm on all around them - Angelus going so far as to attempt to open the mouth of hell and suck all into it, while Buffy comes wickedly close to losing everything, including her own life - as it stands, all she loses is Jenny Calendar and Kendra.

Season 2, also had a stand-in couple or metaphor for the Buffy/Angel romance - in the form of Spike and Drusilla - who were fools for love, obsessed lovers, who cared not for anyone but each other. Spike was much like Ricky, Pete, Angel/Angelus, and the doomed boy mentioned above in his devotion for Drusilla. Drusilla was also, much like Lily, Debbie, the doomed teacher, and Buffy in her devotion to Spike. It is clear from School Hard through Becoming that Spike would do anything for Dru. He would die for her. He would kill for her. He would sacrifice everything. He would even betray Angelus, and strike a deal with the enemy - the slayer - to get her back. Buffy likewise appears to be willing to do anything to get Angel back - including stall when she thinks Willow can re-insoul him. They are both love's bitch, being lead about by a leash - at Angel and Dru's whim. While Angel and Drusilla cavort behind them, seeming not to care. Angel and Drusilla go from weak, damsels in What's Your Line two-parter, to devilish controllers in Innocence and Becoming. And Spike and Buffy go from sacrificing everything to save them in What's Your Line - to fighting them in duels that are, but not quite to the death.

It's the gothic romance turned inside out.

Beside these wild passionate love affairs - are the romances of Buffy's friends. Each a separate take on her own. Xander and Cordelia - which typify the mortal foes or star-crossed lovers, who realize they really have a lot in common and fall headlong into lust and possibly love. Willow and OZ - the companionable gentle lovers, who just snuggle and never argue and rarely appear to kiss - yet OZ turns into a beast and has that violent potential but like Angel, it's not OZ - he isn't aware when it happens. Then finally Giles and Jenny, the more mature, adult romance, complete with awkward courtship, and minor betrayals and forgiveness - it is the one that does end the most abruptly, a direct casualty of the Buffy/Angel romance.

The message seems to be clear, it is not romantic love in of itself that is the problem, so much as being completely lost in it, where the only thing you care about is your lover, they are all that matters and all that you see. There are other things, more interesting things than romantic love...which you can forget, when you are caught inside it.

It's an interesting critique - particularly when you consider all the tv shows and books that play into this fantasy or trope. The most famous amongst them is the best-selling Twilight series. Whedon's Buffy in a way satirizes the romances in Twilight, True Blood, Moonlight, Forever Knight, and many many more. It is what distinguishes Buffy and why the show and writing stand out. In Buffy, the lover's do not ride off into the sunset, instead she tells him at the end of the series - what was the highlight of our relationship? When you tried to kill me? Or when I sent you to hell? But then Buffy, unlike the others is not a romance, it is a coming of age horror tale, focusing on the journey of a flawed heroine through a world filled with demons both literal and metaphorical. Told with satiric wit and often undercutting the romantic tropes within the genre. The irony, of course, is that a good portion of the fandom has resisted the satire and continues, much - I suspect - to the writers considerable chagrin not to mention annoyance - to insist on the durability and sustainability of whatever romantic trope the writer is lampooning. Stubbornly blind to the satire contained within the tale.

We see, I think, what we want to see. We hear the story the way we want to hear it, regardless of how well it may be told. It's the most frustrating thing about human communication - no matter what language and no matter how well translated, you cannot force someone to hear or see what you want them to, especially when they wish to see something else entirely. Any more than you can force them to agree or see your point of view. You can write volumes arguing it, they will still stubbornly only read the bits of what you wrote that they wished to read. As I fear you may well be doing now with what I wrote above.


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